


The Rabbit's Cries May Bring The Wolves

by TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Drama, Family Secrets, Light Angst, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, M/M, Missing Persons, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:08:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23111470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard/pseuds/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard
Summary: Some secrets are better left buried.
Comments: 27
Kudos: 36





	1. A Prologue

Kim Seungmin quite liked his new school.

There wasn’t much about it _not_ to like.

It was huge and there were about a hundred hallways and maybe just as many secret passageways and hidden doors (or so he guessed.) 

It was also old. Like, really old. The traditional Korean architecture rattled whenever the wind blew and let in low, moaning gusts of chilly November air. But the school also looked like a palace with its grand stone staircases and wide open courtyards and the nice little lake with the bridge and the gazebo. At the same time, the school was also _new_. Large glass and metal boxes were built next to and hedged between all of the traditional Korean architecture and all of the furniture was angular and see-through and reflective in ways that only expensive, modern things could be.

At first, such contradictions confused him. It was easy to get lost even though all of the buildings and dorms had fancy names. And it could be a little dreamlike to step out of a huge modern box of a structure only to step into an old, brightly-painted piece of ancient history.

The school was kind of scary, if he wanted to be honest. Once he peeled back the layers and saw what was beneath them.

The hallways got really dark at night. It was always a little chilly in his dorm room. And although the gardens were well-maintained and the lake was pretty or whatever, it was still the middle of winter and the branches of the dead trees scratched at the glass windows when the wind picked up which made sounds like someone was always walking right behind him. Even when there weren’t too many other students around.

And the quiet.

The quiet got to Seungmin the most. 

It was rarely quiet in the classrooms and only quiet in the dorm halls when it was past lights out.

But that wasn’t the kind of quiet Seungmin was creeped out by.

It was the quiet of winter. It was the quiet of the world that got to him. And that kind of quiet blanketed the school and dampened out all other sound.

Raising his hand, he asked to be excused to the restroom and then wandered out of the building and across the school grounds. Not to get into any trouble, as he considered himself a good kid, but just to _look_. Just to stand at the top of the main building’s towering staircase so he could get high enough up to see over the high walls that marked the edge of school property.

And he hated that there wasn’t much to see. 

Just hills and dead, leafless trees and distant, snow-covered mountains and the _idea_ of a city just on the other side of the horizon. Just a touch beyond where he couldn’t see.

And it was so quiet. The migratory birds were gone. It was too cold for the insects. Everyone good and smart was in class. It was just Seungmin and the rustling trees and whispering wind. It was just tiny little Seungmin beneath a slate gray sky.

All alone. Well, not alone exactly but alone enough.

His mother said this school would be good for him. That it would be better if he got out of the house and played with other boys and got a crush on a girl. It would be better if he went to a _real school_. 

Seungmin just hated that she sent him to a ‘real school’ so far away from her.

So far away from everything.

And everyone.

Maybe he didn't like his new school even half as much as he first thought.

He had only been here a week but he fought the urge to believe that maybe his mother _left him here_.

Figuring he was pushing his luck in terms of keeping his teacher from getting suspicious, Seungmin descended the steps and tried to find his way back to his classroom building.

But the glass doors he walked through didn’t lead to the hallway that he thought they would. Instead of turning around and going back the way he came, he kept walking forward, kept pushing through more doors and shuffling down more hallways. He passed classrooms he’d never been to filled with students he wasn’t sure he’d met. He had definitely gotten turned around somehow. But at which door? At which building? Was he on the north side of campus now or the south side? 

He was getting a little tired from all of the walking--a little short of breath--so he decided to stop, lean against the wall and rest. 

Gosh, he just didn’t like this hallway.

He had never been in it. Didn’t know what it connected to. It didn’t tell him where he was.

He just didn’t like it!

Was it because there were no windows and it was very dimly lit? Was it because the walls were so tall and he could hear his own choppy breath echoing back down to him from the high ceiling? Was it because the dark wallpaper made it feel like he was trapped in a cave? Was it because it was so _quiet_?

No.

He didn’t like it because of the paintings. It was _definitely_ because of all the paintings.

Seungmin swallowed a mouthful of anxious spit as he looked up at the things.

They were the exact kind of paintings you’d expect to see in a large, creepy mansion: everyone dressed in decades-old fashion with odd hair, all of their eyes following you no matter which way you leaned.

Perhaps Seungmin wouldn’t hate them so much if there weren’t _so many_. Lined up like soldiers about to go to war. Lined up like little toys on a shelf. They were all massive, the paintings. They’d probably be as tall as he was if they were propped up on the carpeted floor. Taller, maybe. Definitely taller. He had no real way to check because he was positive they would be too heavy for him to lift even if he could manage to reach them on the wall. 

The paintings hung inside of ornate, gilded frames. Each one depicted different members of the school’s founding family (Seungmin had at least paid enough attention during the school tour to remember that much.) In the oldest painting, closest to where Seungmin leaned, was a painting with a single father and his three sons. All of them with cold eyes and hardened, unfeeling expressions. The color of their suits had faded in the painting but the frowns on their faces remained clear. Sharp. Ugly. As Seungmin pushed himself off of the wall and walked to the farthest end of the hall, he looked at every painting and noticed how the number of people in the paintings steadily grew as the siblings brought spouses and children into the bloodline. Beautiful wives with their black hair done up in coiffs or braids, dead-eyed children lined up in rows, all of them wearing the same marigold, navy and green uniform that he was currently shivering in. Then the paintings revealed that even the children grew up, married and had children of their own. As the timeline progressed, the oil paintings grew more crowded and more colorful as some of the children learned to smile. Then the number of people in the paintings steadily declined as the family members died off faster than they could procreate.

It was like the family was cursed or something, that’s how quickly the paintings emptied. When everyone stopped smiling, Seungmin felt uneasy. It wasn’t just the elderly who were there one painting and then gone the next. Some of the children just up and vanished as well. A few were around the ages of Seungmin’s mother. Even more were around Seungmin’s age.

On and on the paintings went. Even as the number of figures in them grew ever more scarce, the colors in the art steadily brightened from one to the next with fewer years of age to dull and yellow the pigments. Even the picture frames themselves subtly changed, becoming more gaudy and reflecting more light as if to make up for the lack of faces and smiles. On and on the paintings went. Past a set of heavy wooden doors that wouldn’t budge when Seungmin tugged on the knob. Past the expensive, antique tables lined with blue and white vases and small marble statues. 

In the most recent oil painting, the one in a glittering gold frame so close to the other set of doors that there wasn’t really room to hang another painting, there were four members of the family left. Just as many as they had started out with all those generations ago. In it, there were two elderly women with striking white hair done up in curls, wearing matching ash gray dresses, wrinkled faces pulled taut with austerity and pride. Next to them stood a tall man with salt and pepper hair and eyes that burned with a fiery ambition that made Seungmin sweat despite the old school’s drafty halls, and then, finally, _him_ …

Him.

Seungmin suddenly had another reason not to like this hallway. To not like this school.

The fourth member of the family in the painting was a young man who couldn’t have been too much older than Seungmin. He sat reared back in a velvet chaise lounge, his suit bright and pastel with flowers on his tie. 

He was the only one smiling.

He looked both foreign and familiar. Strikingly familiar. Perhaps even terrifyingly so, because Seungmin could look into any mirror and see almost those exact same features reflected back to him in the glass. There was just a bit more shape to the jaw, a crueler sharpness in the cheeks, a less-than-friendly hook to the nose. 

It _had_ to be him, Seungmin was sure. 

The slant of the eyebrows, the upward point in the corner of the eyes… Yes. The more he looked, the more certain he became. Seungmin would know that face anywhere, even if it had been five long years since he’d stared up at that face. Even if those five long years had made time pass and burned away the baby fat and added a healthy amount of weight over his bones.

Seungmin would know him anywhere.

Him.

He wanted to keep walking. He wanted to push through the doors and find another set of stairs and hope he found his way back to his class.

But he was rooted to the spot.

He had to stand right here. He _had_ to observe.

The young man in the painting looked too small and too young to sit front and center and yet he also appeared all too pleased with himself to be in such a position. As if he _knew_ he was the most important thing in the room. As if he knew he was the only one allowed to smile.

As Seungmin stared up at the painting, at the young man in the flowery tie and pastel suit, he half-expected the figure to grin that dimpled grin, wink at him and call him ‘bumpkin’ just like old times.

The bell signaling the end of class rang but Seungmin hardly heard it echo through the halls. He barely registered the thunderous noise of dozens and dozens of shoes on carpet as students escaped the classrooms in the adjacent halls. Seungmin could only stand there and stare up at this magnificent, opulent painting of someone who could only be his older brother.

His older brother who had been missing for five long years.

Seungmin opened his mouth and spoke one word: a name. His voice vibrated with a little bit of sadness and maybe a little bit of anger and definitely a good helping of loneliness but, most of all, his voice shook with _hope_. 

The name he spoke was, “Woojin?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/TheSwingbyJHF)


	2. A Quest

Maybe it was a sick trick of the light, the hallway’s weird and skewed and flickering shadows messing with his depth perception.

Maybe it was his whole world flipping upside down violently enough to make Seungmin’s stomach drop to his ankles.

Maybe it was Seungmin’s own rabid, feral imagination foaming at the mouth and sinking its teeth into his brain and forcing him to see what he was not all too sure he wanted to see. 

Or maybe he was just losing it, finally, after all of this time… after all of these years filled with longing and sadness, but… It kind of looked like the Woojin in the oil painting, the Woojin all dressed up in the kind of suit he always claimed that he hated, the Woojin who wasn’t alive and wasn’t supposed to move because he was composed of colored pigments on a canvas… It looked like he  _ smiled _ just a tad bit wider at the mention of his name. 

Like he knew.

Seungmin shook his head. No. He was just tired. Lonely. Desperate. Ready to feast on any tiny crumb of optimism.

It was just some guy who  _ looked _ like Woojin, he thought. Just some guy who  _ reminded _ him of Woojin. That had to be the case. It had to! Because the Woojin he knew… Damn, he was already coming up with reasons to deny what was right in front of him. The Woojin he knew wouldn’t wear a suit. He wouldn’t take the only chair in a room if that left the adults standing. He wouldn’t carry himself like this. Wouldn’t  _ pose _ like this. Wouldn’t grin from ear to ear like this, like he owned everything. 

This had to be someone else. This couldn’t be his big bro.

Seungmin had to remind himself that he and Woojin weren’t but children when they were separated. He wasn’t entirely sure what Woojin would look like with five more years of age on him. Five more years of maturity and puberty and growth. How old would he be now? 17? 18? It was a rare chance but maybe the boy in this painting just looked a lot like his brother.

Then Seungmin blinked up at the painting again and found himself more firmly believing that it couldn’t be anyone else on this planet except Woojin.

Those eyes.

That chin.

Those teeth!

That tiny little scar up his cheek and across his temple from an unfortunate run-in with some playground equipment.

Seungmin gulped. It had to be Woojin.

But it  _ couldn’t _ be Woojin! It was impossible.

The brother Seungmin had known was supposed to be missing. Pronounced dead. 

Gone. 

No one had seen Woojin in five years. Not his old friends or his classmates or the neighbors or the pretty girl who had a crush on him and always bought him candy at lunch. Not even Uncle Wooyoung, with the treehouse in his backyard, had seen a hair on Woojin’s head and Uncle Wooyoung’s house was the first place Woojin always went when he didn’t want to go home. 

No one had seen Woojin since he didn’t come home from school all those years ago. Had it been years? 

Jeez. It had. 

Time was such a strange beast. Cruel and cold and unforgiving. The days stretched on and on yet, at the same time, they were a scrambled up mess of soul-draining repetition that could no longer be easily divided into ‘days.’ 

So, really, all of this could have happened just last month. This despair. This destruction of normalcy and happiness. This emptiness.

That terrible day stood out so clearly in his memories. Seungmin remembered how their mother had gone from calm to frantic to panicked as the hours slid by. “Maybe there was an event at school that ran long?” “Maybe he stopped by at a friend’s house? Surely, Mrs. Lee would have called.” “Do you think he went to go see a movie? Is that why he won’t answer his phone?” “He’s usually never this late. Something definitely went wrong. Oh my God. Where is my baby?”

Hours turned into a long, dreadful night full of tears and phone calls and stress and yelling. So much yelling. Seungmin didn’t know where Woojin was any more than his mother did. “No, I’m not covering for him! I don’t know where he is. I’m not lying!”

One day turned into two days. Into three days. And it was like the people around them needed to wait that long before they started caring. Before they actually started taking Ms. Kim’s fear seriously. The teachers tried to ask Woojin’s friends and classmates if any of them knew where he was, if he’d said anything or mentioned a specific place. The principal only wanted to know if Woojin had gotten involved with something bad, if he had started hanging around any ‘unsavory types.’ The cops just asked pointed questions that made it sound like they were convinced he ran away from home for a reason. And, sure, they weren’t the richest but their life was comfortable. They had what they needed.

Woojin wouldn’t just run away.

One week turned into two weeks before Seungmin’s mother raised enough absolute hell for the police to actually move seriously. They gave it their all, in the beginning, but their sympathy was finite.

It had only taken three or four months before the cops gave up. Four months that were nowhere near long enough to uncover any answers or find any secrets or put together any clues. They had given up after only four months, told Seungmin and his mom to “stay strong” and then turned around and calmly stepped back down the front steps as if there honestly could be anything more important than finding Woojin. There had been search parties for a little while. Whole crowds had walked city block after city block and even out into the woods on the edge of town. Everyone had been involved at first. Teachers and school friends and army veterans and the librarians who knew Woojin from all the time he spent in the library. Distant relatives who usually only showed up in their lives for family reunions also showed up. Even strangers with good intentions showed up with their flashlights and reassuring words and promises to keep Woojin in their prayers. There had been missing posters stapled to lamp posts. One of their older cousins had even helped with social media posts. Then, over the weeks, over the months, the search parties thinned and thinned in number until it was just Seungmin and his mom-- _ their _ mom--driving around town with a map, crossing out neighborhoods as they ran down sidewalks, rang doorbells and showed strangers photographs and shouted Woojin’s name. Four months was all it took for everyone else to go back to how things were. For things to go back to normal. And maybe, just maybe, Seungmin gave up then too. He didn’t want to admit it, especially to his mother, but he was getting tired of waiting up half the night just in case Woojin knocked on the front door because he simply forgot his key. He was getting tired of sleeping in Woojin’s bed because it no longer brought him any comfort now that it no longer smelled like his brother. He was tired of waking up early on weekends to ride with his mom and do more searching and walking. He still had school. Still had homework. Still had volleyball. He was just a kid and he was  _ tired _ , but he felt selfish for even thinking that so of course he didn’t say it aloud.

He didn’t say any of the things he was thinking aloud.

In fact, he said less and less and less until he didn’t say much of anything at all. 

The city was too dense, he convinced himself. Too overpopulated.  _ He could be anywhere _ , they all said. So he started saying it too. Woojin could be anywhere.

But he wasn’t anywhere.

He was here.

Here.

Here at this strange, isolated, private academy in the mountains with its mix-match architecture and labyrinthine halls. It was practically a dragon’s castle trapping everyone inside it’s towering stone walls. 

Woojin was  _ here _ . In this place. Smiling down at Seungmin in his pastel suit and floral tie, not looking the least bit sad about being separated from his family. In fact, he looked right at home, lounging across such opulent furniture, surrounded in such a bright gold picture frame.

He looked better off without them.

Seungmin was torn between fathomless sadness and blazing anger. He wanted to cry and reach up and gently touch Woojin’s scarred face but Seungmin also wanted to scream and claw at the painting until he’d scratched Woojin’s face off of the canvas.

But all of that petty emotion emptied out of him, replaced with the sharp, tempered edge of brand new determination.

His mother didn’t send him all of the way out here to this dimly-lit and quiet place to be rid of him like he’d led himself to believe.

She had sent him here because, somehow, some way, she had discovered that Woojin was here.

Woojin was here.

And she was leaving it up to Seungmin to find him.


	3. A Moment

It wasn’t until Seungmin decided to look for Woojin that he realized just how difficult that would be.

These weren’t their lazy childhood days anymore. Seungmin couldn’t just go out in the backyard and find Woojin halfway up the pecan tree anymore. He couldn’t just go to the Lee family’s residence across the street and ask Mrs. Lee if Woojin was up in Minho’s room. He couldn’t just call Uncle Wooyoung and ask if Woojin was in the treehouse. Those had all stopped being options five years ago.

Nothing was normal now. So Seungmin had to go about this in a way that was unfamiliar to him.

Or, more accurately, he would have to look for Woojin in the only way that _was_ familiar to him: walking through places he’d never been to, a vice grip on an old and possibly inaccurate photograph, asking strangers if they’d seen his older brother and if they had, could they call?

It would take a long time. It would take forever.

His new school was too large to explore in the scarce minutes he had between classes.

He was too new to the student body to have any clue on where to start his search. Was Woojin on a sports team? Was he president of some big club? Was he shaping up to be class valedictorian? Five years was a long, long time and Woojin could have changed in infinite ways between today and that fateful evening when they were kids. Did Woojin still like to read books? If so, would he spend his free time in the school library?

The fact that Seungmin couldn’t even be _sure_ kind of hurt him. All of his memories were of who Woojin used to be. And even those memories had long ago started to fade and change with time and age. They had kept all of Woojin’s things in his room, everything just like he’d left it as if they were trying to preserve his essence in amber, as if they were trying to display his history in a museum. Would Woojin even like any of it when he came back? If he came back? Would any of what Seungmin remembered of the past tell him about who Woojin was _now_?

Seungmin kind of hated himself for how easily he gave up back then. If he’d tried a little harder, searched a little longer… 

No. He couldn’t give up before he began.

He would find a way.

With brand new determination, Seungmin pushed through the double doors at the end of the long hall, leaving that haunting painting behind. 

It didn’t take long at all for him to be surrounded by the rest of the students. The kids in the hallway moved like a river with a strong current and as soon as he stepped in, he was swept away. It was easy to go with the flow. Keep his head down and try to get a glimpse of everyone’s faces. He fought against the crowd occasionally just to steer himself towards the corridors he needed to get to his locker. But other than that, he moved along almost mechanically, trying to formulate a plan of action in his head.

Certainly, there was a class registry he could look through? Old yearbooks full of photos and names? There had to be something he could find.

The campus, though isolated in the mountains with stone walls practically caging them in, had grounds that were still large and sprawling with numerous nooks and crannies and alcoves to hide from annoying younger brothers in. Just like Seungmin had been told again and again, Woojin could be _anywhere_. He could be right here, in this crowded hallway somewhere, but Seungmin wouldn’t know. Everyone was dressed in the same plaid uniforms, near-indistinguishable from one another. All of them cogs in one great machine. The school buildings had numerous stairwells, maze-like hallways, and rooms that connected to rooms that connected to other rooms in bizarre, almost nonsensical fashion, hard evidence of architectural additions haphazardly added over the years.

The possibilities were endless. Seungmin did not know where to start.

Maybe it would be simplest to ask someone.

That’s all it would take, really. To the point where his mother would start a fuss. _Please talk to me!_

Seungmin could ask that girl over there, carrying her textbooks in a tote bag. 

He could ask that other girl, with beautiful multi-colored butterfly clips in her hair. Her smile was nice.

He should pull that person over there aside, the one with all the noisy keys on their belt loop.

Or he could ask that boy over there, with the bushy hair that was almost rule-breaking in its length. 

But… 

Just the _idea_ terrified him. Just the act of making a connection, just the thought of breaking out of his shell.

Seungmin wasn’t sure he was brave enough to do that. 

Brave enough to approach someone, get them to pay him attention, open up to them, ask them for help. Especially this kind of help. Oh, there were so many steps involved. So many opportunities for things to go wrong in the process. It was a lot of work. Just thinking about it all exhausted him.

But if he could only ask a question! Just one.

Something straight to the point like “Do you know where the boy in this painting is?” would get him where he needed to go in a single breath but Seungmin hadn’t asked anyone _anything_ in months. It would take quite a bit of focus and energy to get the words out, to translate the white noise of what he was feeling into comprehensible, decipherable speech. 

_Do you know where the boy in this painting is?_

He repeated the question in his head over and over, like he needed to memorize it before he could speak it. But the more it echoed in his head, the more flawed something so simple became.

Was ‘boy’ an appropriate term for someone two years older than he was?

Plus, ‘this painting’ was a phrase that would imply that he was standing in front of the painting in question, or that he could take whoever he was asking directly to it as if it weren’t halfway across campus in a hallway he wasn’t even sure he could get back to. Jeez. Seungmin had been shocked so badly by Woojin’s face in that painting, so terribly surprised, that he’d forgotten to do something as stupidly simple as take a photograph of it.

Maybe he should do that. Yes. He should go do that. He should retrace his steps and try to find those double doors again. He should snap a photo of the painting with his phone. Maybe he should send it to his mother and tell her that he found a really big clue. He wasn’t so sure how it would really help, but a gargantuan oil painting of his long lost brother had to count for something. Right?

The hallways around him were thinning out as more and more students got settled in their classrooms.

Seungmin was running out of time. The bell to start the next class would ring soon. Any minute now, actually. He needed to make a decision. Quickly. Did he go to class and try to sit through the lecture with all of this urgency and curiosity bubbling up in his veins? Or did he risk being caught out without a hall pass, did he risk being late to class and get detention, just to snap a few photos? 

The answer was clear, he told himself. 

He would go to class. The painting would still be there in another hour or so. It’s not like the oils would change. It’s not like he would find anyone else’s face in the pigment except his brother’s.

Seungmin didn’t know why, but he imagined sending his mother a photo of the painting. A closeup of Woojin’s face. He didn’t know why but he imagined her casual response. “Who is this supposed to be?” His brain supplied him with something else. Another impossible scenario. He would find Woojin. In some hall somewhere. In one of these classrooms. Seungmin would find him and ask him, plainly, “Are you my brother?” And Woojin would look him straight in the face and answer, “Who are you?”

Screw it.

Seungmin turned around. He ran as fast as he could. Away from his next class. There weren’t too many people left in the halls and they quickly ducked out of his way when they saw him coming. He tried to remember which hallways he went down, which stairwells he climbed up. He tried to go back to the place he came from, that one dimly-lit hall with all of those paintings. He had to find it!

The bell for class rang shrilly through the hallway, echoing like a banshee’s wail over his head.

Still, he ran. 

But not for long. Not for long.

He wasn’t very strong. He couldn’t run very far. He couldn’t lift too much. He couldn’t fight. He had always relied on Woojin to do such things. Woojin was the one who could climb trees and build things and run forever and ever. Seungmin could only follow as far as he was able. Then stop and watch everything else. 

Breath hard and heavy in his lungs, Seungmin came to a halt in front of a set of double doors that just _felt_ right. A set of double doors that could only open up to the hallway with the paintings. He was sure. 

Seungmin pushed open the tall, heavy doors with all of his remaining strength and, wheezing, let himself inside the corridor.

He half-expected to be totally wrong. He half-expected to be on the wrong floor. To have found some other hall in some other building but, no, he found the right place. He was certain. This was the corridor he was looking for with all of its gaudy picture frames and hideous, old paintings; the wallpaper so old and musty he could _smell_ the tradition.

The doors slammed shut behind him, the noise so loud and heavy and final that the impact startled a shriek out of him and sent his paper thin voice sailing up to the high ceiling.

But things weren’t entirely right.

The winter chill must have settled a bit heavier into the building’s old walls because it was cold in here now. Cold enough to make the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Cold enough for him to spot swirls of his warm breath in the air.

That felt wrong.

He didn’t want to be here for very long. He hated how quiet it was. To the point where he could hear the faint gurgle of his own pulse in his ears. He hated how still it was. Like he was trapped behind glass. Seungmin fished his phone out of his pocket and swiped his thumb across the screen to get to his camera. He held up the device and pointed it at the gold-framed painting. 

He saw the gaudy, opulent backdrop. Velvet and gold and jewel tones. 

He saw the two women in ash gray, their faces old and wrinkled and ghastly, their eyes dim.

He saw the old man with his graying hair and ill-fitting suit and too-tight frown.

He also saw the empty chaise lounge. The cushions were as red as rubies, the swooping back end of the piece of furniture trimmed in elegantly carved wood.

Seungmin lowered his phone. He rubbed at his eyes and blinked so hard that stars floated across his vision. He looked back up at the painting. The darkness at the edge of his vision cleared. The stars dimmed and faded.

Woojin was there. As he should be. Seated on the lounge chair with that grin on his face like he wanted everyone who walked by to know that this was his home now and that he had no brother, no other family than this.

A sound broke the silence.

Creaking hinges. 

Seungmin looked over.

The set of doors near the center of the hall, the same ones that were locked when he’d tried them a half hour earlier, groaned with age as they swung open. Someone stepped out into the hall. Long legs and wide shoulders. A face with a light scar across the cheek.

Seungmin’s heart leapt into his throat. Seeing him in the painting was one thing, with all of his features flattened by oil and brushstrokes, but to see him in person was a completely new experience. He had to be Seungmin’s brother. There was no other way. His face had been sharpened by the blade of maturity and his body had been stretched tall and thin by puberty but Seungmin would recognize his own blood, wouldn’t he? He would recognize his own family.

The man who looked like Woojin closed the double doors behind him and started walking to the end of the hall, right towards Seungmin.

This was his chance! They were alone. There was no one here to keep Seungmin from saying five years worth of things. He opened his mouth and tried to shove his voice out of his throat, out into the air, but only the driest of croaks came out, a noise that alerted the man to Seungmin’s presence in the dimly-lit hall.

They met eyes.

Seungmin raised a hand to this throat and rubbed vigorously as if he could massage the words out of his mouth.

The man who looked so much like his brother said nothing, his back straight and rigid, legs still spread midway through a step. He just stared at Seungmin. First with eyes widened by surprise and then with eyebrows furrowed with irritation. A frown. “What are you doing out of class,” he asked. His voice was so sharp. So melodic. Fingers hammering away at the keys of a piano. “Do you have a pass? Or are you asking for demerits?”

There was no recognition in his gaze. No spark of familiarity. And that lack of kinship was exactly what Seungmin feared. Every time he and his mother searched another neighborhood, every night they spent waiting up by the phone or staring out the living room window expecting their family to come walking up the front steps. What if Woojin had been gone so long that he just didn’t recognize them? That the childhood they had together was just erased by distance?

But Seungmin still had to try. It was up to him. He had to do something or say something that would get Woojin to _remember_ . But, jeez, it was so difficult to pick apart his own memories and figure out the difference between the ones that had truly happened in their past and the ones he’d made up over the years while crying in Woojin’s room. But he had to be strong. He had to _say something_. His mother had sent him here on a mission. Hadn’t she? She had known Woojin would be here. Somehow. In some way. That would be the only reason she would let herself be separated from her remaining son, wouldn’t it? For this fleeting possibility that all three of them would be reunited. Right?

It was the second time he’d spoken that day. It was an echo of the only word he seemed capable of saying. “Woojin?”

Not even a twinkle of recognition sparkled in Woojin’s eyes. In the eyes of this man that looked like Woojin. He only pursed his lips like he’d bitten into something sour. “You’ve got the wrong guy,” he said, already turning away to keep walking down the hall.

Seungmin said the three words he’d been waiting five years to say: “Please come home.”

That, at least, got the man to stop with his hands on the door’s fancy, gilded knob. He glanced over his shoulder at Seungmin, mouth open like he was but a breath away from saying something. Saying anything. But he pushed through the doors and left Seungmin alone in the quiet, dark, cold hallway.

If Seungmin had looked up, if he had taken just a moment to glance towards the painting, he would have seen that the Woojin in the painting, dressed in his pastel suit and floral tie, was scowling.


End file.
